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One of Three
When Claire Longley finds a knapsack containing three journals written by an Irish immigrant their lives become entwined with the successes, failures, secrets, and long-buried wounds that haunt them both and how she finds the strength, through his words, to make the changes in her life she desperately needs. In this first of three novels, One of Three, Claire is a present day Hydrologist whose project entails collecting water resources data to determine if there is enough ground water to support a proposed mine in central Nevada and sustain the natural environment in the basins that she is studying. When she finds Daniel’s journals it awakens a spark in her that had long been diminished. She becomes captivated by the Irish immigrant, the near annihilation of his people from the potato famine, and the struggle he faces in this new land that is America in the mid 19th century. While Daniel’s wife Mary waits for him to send for her at the Irish estate known as Glen Haven, where she and her mother are servants, they survive the famine and disease with the help of Lord Forester. Their lives interweave and Claire finds herself transformed by the past and renewed for the future.
Reviews
Midwest Book Review

This first book in a trilogy presents the work and character of Claire, a hydrologist whose latest project is analyzing water samples to assess the environmental impact of a mine. Not in her job description is discovery, when she stumbles upon the journals of an Irish immigrant who details his struggles for survival in the harsh new land that is the American dream. 

 

But the saga doesn't open with Claire's world; it starts with a forward from the 1846 Cork Reporterdocumenting the suffering of masses in Ireland due to the potato famine and considering the politics, schemes, and dilemmas that arise from it ("We repeat our question: what is the number of dead we must first count over before food will begin to be distributed?") before fast forwarding to the future of Claire Longley's experiences. 

This neatly sets the stage for what is to come: a thought-provoking intersection of worlds when Claire's present-day concerns unexpectedly and directly collide with the past. 

The journal format opens with a presentation in italics: a fine method for clearly differentiating between one Daniel Conner's 1847 life and times as narrated in his journal and Claire's present-day era. So many novels that juxtapose past and present do so without clear delineation between the two, leaving their readers helplessly stuck in a time vortex: not so One of Three, which is satisfyingly clear throughout. 

 

As Claire absorbs stories of struggle that begin in the Old Country and continue in the new, she imagines herself in the miserable world that is 1800s Ireland, muses upon "…what a world this has become and what a world it must have been.", and finds in Daniel's life a cathartic drive to uncover some connections between her involvement in the mine project, her life, and the past. 

 

She feels compelled to keep reading Daniel's journal, discovering within it more nuggets of sadness and strife, and finds her process of attempting to understand the ground-water flow system and the mine's future impacts upon it actually has a direct relationship to her attempts to understand Daniel's life and times. 

 

As each chapter heading clearly states its setting, whether past or present, readers are able to effortlessly follow along, whether it be from Claire's perspective or that of Daniel. Both walk similar paths, albeit in very different times. Both hold confrontations, questions, and challenges that, if properly addressed, will change their lives and choices. And both find themselves confronting missing loved ones, political machines, and strange journeys to foreign places they cannot control. 

 

If this story were narrated simply from Claire's adventures, without regard to Daniel's journals and experiences, it would hold nowhere near the depth and associations that lend it the complexity to surprise and delight novel readers seeking something less linear. The fact that a stranger's journals can prove so cathartic and link so easily to events over a century later, makes for an intriguing element.  Chapters neatly explore missing persons, political outcomes, and interrupted flow systems, and in the process Claire comes to realize she has more in common with Daniel's approaches to life and adversity than she'd realized. 

 

Two different worlds collide; two different perspectives coalesce, and the resulting exploration makes One of Three a vibrant story of what has and has not changed in 160 years, steeping readers in two seemingly-different worlds and brewing up a tea complex associations that, in the end, point out (among other things) the need for an understanding of history and patterns of repetition in order to truly move forward. 

 

This saga of family, loss, and reconciliation will thus delight fiction readers who seek a complex blend of historical, social, political and personal insights: not recommended for light leisure readers, but for those who enjoy a story replete with food for thought. 

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